Hi all,
Just a note about deleting users. I have a wiki that was spammed with about 100 "junk" usernames (made up of random characters), some of which were then used to vandalize the content. After a little fruitless effort with the DeleteUser extension (http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:Deleteuser) I figured out how to delete them all in MySQL.
Wasn't difficult at all - just copied the userlist into a text file, weeded out the real usernames (which were in the minority), inserted more text into each line to make it an SQL command, and executed it all at once.
This was a situation where I really needed to delete - the junk had rendered the userlist useless, and none of the spammers had contributed anything that I wanted to keep. Haven't seen any ill effects. And of course now I've locked down registration to keep the spammers out.
Good Afternoon MediaWiki Fans:
I'm curious what procedures folks use to safely update a MediaWiki installation that is in use.
Do you disable the system temporarily while running the update procedure ?
Or create a copy of the site and do the update there, then switch ?
Or simply run the update procedure and cross your fingers and hope nothing goes wrong ?
It isn't clear to me how to properly update a running system.
--Hiram
On 7/9/07, Hiram Clawson hiram@soe.ucsc.edu wrote:
Good Afternoon MediaWiki Fans:
I'm curious what procedures folks use to safely update a MediaWiki installation that is in use.
Do you disable the system temporarily while running the update procedure ?
Or create a copy of the site and do the update there, then switch ?
Or simply run the update procedure and cross your fingers and hope nothing goes wrong ?
It isn't clear to me how to properly update a running system.
--Hiram
I just set the wiki to read-only (with Special:Lockdb) and run the update. I don't know if it would actually mess anything up if I didn't set it to read-only, but I figure better safe than sorry.
________________________________
From: mediawiki-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org on behalf of Emufarmers Sangly Sent: Tue 10/07/2007 03:19 To: MediaWiki announcements and site admin list Subject: Re: [Mediawiki-l] proper update procedure
On 7/9/07, Hiram Clawson hiram@soe.ucsc.edu wrote:
Good Afternoon MediaWiki Fans:
I'm curious what procedures folks use to safely update a MediaWiki installation that is in use.
Do you disable the system temporarily while running the update procedure ?
Or create a copy of the site and do the update there, then switch ?
Or simply run the update procedure and cross your fingers and hope nothing goes wrong ?
It isn't clear to me how to properly update a running system.
--Hiram
I just set the wiki to read-only (with Special:Lockdb) and run the update. I don't know if it would actually mess anything up if I didn't set it to read-only, but I figure better safe than sorry.
-- Arr, ye emus, http://emufarmers.com
======
When I use Special:Lockdb I get a pemission error:
Permission error
http://mike2.openmethodology.org/index.php/Special:Lockdb#searchInput You are not allowed to execute the action you have requested.
So what I have doing is setting the following variable in LocalSettings.php
$wgReadOnly = "The wiki software is currently being updated bla bla bla.";
The message is displayed on the edit page where all edit functionality is disabled. You can use HTML tags within the quotes to improve the visibility of the message (e.g. <b>The wiki ....</b>).
-Andi
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On 11/07/07, Rindler, Andreas andreas.rindler@bearingpoint.com wrote:
When I use Special:Lockdb I get a pemission error:
It's confined to users with the "siteadmin" right, which is no longer given to anyone by default.
$wgReadOnly = "The wiki software is currently being updated bla bla bla.";
Setting $wgReadOnly directly is faster and more convenient, most of the time.
Rob Church
________________________________
From: mediawiki-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org on behalf of Rob Church Sent: Wed 11/07/2007 08:45 To: MediaWiki announcements and site admin list Subject: Re: [Mediawiki-l] proper update procedure
On 11/07/07, Rindler, Andreas andreas.rindler@bearingpoint.com wrote:
When I use Special:Lockdb I get a pemission error:
It's confined to users with the "siteadmin" right, which is no longer given to anyone by default.
$wgReadOnly = "The wiki software is currently being updated bla bla bla.";
Setting $wgReadOnly directly is faster and more convenient, most of the time.
Rob Church ========
Is Sysops the same as siteadmin? Because I am a member of the Sysops group. And I can't see a siteadmin group (MW 1.10.0).
-Andi
*************************************************************************************************** The information in this email is confidential and may be legally privileged. Access to this email by anyone other than the intended addressee is unauthorized. If you are not the intended recipient of this message, any review, disclosure, copying, distribution, retention, or any action taken or omitted to be taken in reliance on it is prohibited and may be unlawful. If you are not the intended recipient, please reply to or forward a copy of this message to the sender and delete the message, any attachments, and any copies thereof from your system. ***************************************************************************************************
On 11/07/07, Rindler, Andreas andreas.rindler@bearingpoint.com wrote:
Is Sysops the same as siteadmin? Because I am a member of the Sysops group. And I can't see a siteadmin group (MW 1.10.0).
No, as I said, "siteadmin" is a *right*, which is not at all the same as a group, and as I also said, it's not a right which is granted to any group by default in all modern release branches.
Rob Church
On 7/11/07, Rob Church robchur@gmail.com wrote:
On 11/07/07, Rindler, Andreas andreas.rindler@bearingpoint.com wrote:
Is Sysops the same as siteadmin? Because I am a member of the Sysops
group. And I can't see a siteadmin group (MW 1.10.0).
No, as I said, "siteadmin" is a *right*, which is not at all the same as a group, and as I also said, it's not a right which is granted to any group by default in all modern release branches.
Rob Church
You'd set it with something like this in LocalSettings.php: $wgGroupPermissions['siteadmin]['siteadmin'] = true; Then you would assign it as with any other right at Special:Userrights.
There probably isn't any good reason to use that instead of setting $wgReadOnly, but I find it more convenient (and vaguely satisfying).
So is setting wgReadOnly to some string all that is necessary to safely upgrade ? I guess this stops all db access ?
Is this what is done at WikiPedia ?
--Hiram
Rob Church wrote:
On 11/07/07, Rindler, Andreas andreas.rindler@bearingpoint.com wrote:
When I use Special:Lockdb I get a pemission error:
It's confined to users with the "siteadmin" right, which is no longer given to anyone by default.
$wgReadOnly = "The wiki software is currently being updated bla bla bla.";
Setting $wgReadOnly directly is faster and more convenient, most of the time.
Rob Church
On 11/07/07, Hiram Clawson hiram@soe.ucsc.edu wrote:
So is setting wgReadOnly to some string all that is necessary to safely upgrade ? I guess this stops all db access ?
It will theoretically stop MediaWiki performing any writes to the database. While this is probably pretty safe, if you want to completely halt operations, then you need to temporarily revoke the MySQL user's permissions.
Is this what is done at WikiPedia ?
No.
Rob Church
On 11/07/07, Hiram Clawson hiram@soe.ucsc.edu wrote:
So is setting wgReadOnly to some string all that is necessary to safely
upgrade ?
You also want to make a backup of your database and files. That's a given for any software, but it's definitely something that's necessary to safely upgrade (and you didn't mention it, so...).
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